Film dubbing is often considered as the translation of the linguistic part of the message. This approach is problematic because it isolates the linguistic part from the rest of the film message. This article sets out to present the dubbing text which is a complex fabric in which audio, visual elements and gestures play their role. In analysing how the translation of the linguistic elements should take into account the weight of image and sound elements, we want to make it clear that the dubbing text is a compound made up of the image track, the sound track and the paralinguistic elements of the message. These elements come together to produce the dubbing text. A common cultural knowledge is required to read and understand a multimodal text in which image, sound and gestures come together to create such a complex fabric.